Authors: Robert Bloch
The realities of the Great Old Ones spawned in outer space who came to reign over earth before mankind rose from primal slime—rose at their bidding, to serve and succor their desires. Man was created to worship and obey the Great Old Ones who gave the gift of life, and there is proof of that relationship. Proof in the legends of all lands, recently resurrected by Velikowsky’s theories of “astronauts” from other planets and Van Daniken’s “chariots of the gods”—symbols of the journeyings of the Great Old Ones through space and time.
Even bits of physical proof remain and may still be found, for it was with the wisdom and direction of their immortal masters that men reared the towering temples on Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu and the lost lands of prehistory and the biblical Babel that was destroyed by flood.
It was the flood—product of upheavals, which shattered and submerged continents in convulsions caused by the passing of huge comets—that tumbled the temples of the Great Old Ones, trapping them beneath the crushing weight of roiling oceans or mountainous masses of polar ice.
Somehow a minute portion of humanity survived; survived in brutish squalor over interminable epochs of glacial drift and only gradually evolving into a semblance of civilization once again. But amongst the new cultures some of the past was preserved in myth, distorted to form the basis of emerging religions. Some of the knowledge was preserved also; enough to account for the fashioning of Stonehenge, Zimbabwe, the Mayan temples, Angkor Wat, the Great Pyramid.
New priesthoods ruled here, perverting the ancient wisdom to their own ends. They denied the very existence of the Great Old Ones, masking their memory in the guise of demons—Ahriman, Set, Baal, Satan.
But they could not mask the racial memory, which still rises in men’s dreams and is mirrored in their art forms today. Always the collective unconscious has retained a hint of the truth and it exists in altered fashion even now. What is astrology but a symbolic account of the influence of the stars—the stars from which the Great Old Ones issued forth to rule our destinies?
Always the priestcraft has sought to discredit truth, to dismiss awareness as evil. Man fell, they say, because he tasted that which is forbidden—the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And it was the priests’ gods, singular or plural, who sent floods and cataclysms as punishment. Always the self-appointed spokesmen of the new gods maintain that theirs is the only wisdom, their rituals of worship the only way.
Hence sects and schisms, wars and conquest, division into nations, rivalry of doctrines born in fire and blood—the destruction of the many so that the few may rule. Hence, too, the persecution of the faithful.
Yet the faithful remain. Always there have been a chosen few, the initiate, who were not deceived by the distortions and deceptions practiced by their mortal masters. They remember the Great Old Ones.
And the Great Old Ones remember them.
For they have not died. Entities capable of crossing the vastness of outer space are immortal. Buried they may be under titanic immensities of ice or immured in great stone citadels beneath the surging sea—buried, but still sentient. Sleeping throughout eons that are to them only an instant; stirring in their slumber to send forth dreams. Dreams that invade the minds of unbelievers in the guise of nightmares—but to believers they bring fresh faith, fresh hope of a day when the Great Old Ones shall arise and reign again.
In sunken R’lyeh, Great Cthulhu lies waiting, waiting for the time when the stars are right and the power of release returns. That time is close at hand and the power is potently preserved, set down in secret writings that the faithful have guarded through the ages. It is this power, this knowledge, which is embodied in the Starry Wisdom.
“I bring you tidings,” Reverend Nye intoned. “The weary waiting is at an end. The constellations cluster in their cosmic courses. Last month’s earthquake was a token of that which is ordained. Forces form to fashion the future. Soon mountains will be as motes of dust, the icy barriers dissolve, the sea surrenders its secrets.
“Many will perish—the priests of false faiths and their false prophets whom men call scientists, together with all those who follow them. There will be times of terror for them, my friends—and times of triumph for us. Those who believe shall survive.”
The gloved hands rose, weaving before the dark face in slow patterns contrapuntal to the woven words. “To some, I know, this seems the sheerest nonsense. To others it is blasphemy, or at best the stuff of superstition. And you say to yourselves, who is this charlatan?”
The cadence of his voice changed abruptly. “Or do you say, rather, who is this turkey and what’s with all this far-out jive he’s laying on us? Man, we don’t dig what’s coming down, we got too many smarts?” Reverend Nye smiled and shrugged. “Well, however you phrase it, a doubt is a doubt. It stands in the path of truth and must be removed.
“So now is the time of truth.”
As he spoke, the gloved hands dipped beneath the rear of the lectern and rose again, holding a box or chest.
Kay stared at the rectangular container; it was perhaps a foot wide and eighteen inches in length and depth, formed of a yellowish metal tarnished with age. Its outer surface was etched with designs of writhing figures only half-visible in the shadows and the lid was ornately carved.
Reverend Nye set the box atop the lectern; the crowd murmured and then fell still. Kay sensed an urgency, an expectancy, and from the warmth of their huddled mass rose a hint of chill that carried the scent of fear. Once again everything seemed to blur.
Then the Reverend Nye pressed against the box on its far side. The lid sprang open and out of the blur came a lance of light—dancing, dazzling light from within the metal container.
Nye’s face was suffused in its glow as he stared over the opened box. His arms extended and his voice rose with the gesture.
“Behold the gift of the Great Old Ones, risen from the sea as they themselves shall surely rise! Behold the gift of truth, sent down from the stars to set you free!”
He tilted the box forward to show the source of the light within—a huge crystal, set and suspended by horizontal metal bands extending from the sides and base of the box’s interior, its surface carved into fiery facets, which poured a luminous radiance into the eyes of the audience.
Kay tried to turn away from the blinding brilliance, but there was no escape; the glare magnetized vision. The light was everywhere and the voice was everywhere.
The voice was part of the light and the light was part of the voice and the whole was part of a dream. And in the dream Kay herself felt fragmented, fragmented like the facets of the crystal. A part of her watched and a part of her listened, and yet another part participated in what she saw and heard.
For the voice was chanting now, chanting in a strange tongue, which evoked a strange response from the crowd below the platform. Deep guttural growls blended into a buzzing noise, then gave way to shrill, sibilant sounds that bore no resemblance to human voice or human speech, and yet somehow she seemed to sense the meaning of the words, if words they were. It was indeed like a voice heard in dreams, a voice resonating in the echo-chamber of a sleeper’s skull. And despite its strangeness it was familiar; despite its dread, it compelled complete attention and the power that it proclaimed held the promise of reassurance.
Listen not to words but to meaning; open your eyes to truth. Abandon fear for faith, out of the unknown comes understanding.
And in the nightmare, in the dream, in the reality, Kay heard the voice exhorting believers to come forth. Come forth and be cleansed in the crystal’s eternal light, come and be healed of sorrow and of suffering by the shining power of truth.
There was a murmur and a movement; shadowy shapes rose and converged toward the base of the platform beneath the crystal on the lectern. The lame, the halt and the blind were summoned by the voice and drawn by the radiance. Slowly they limped and groped their way forward to stand, each in turn, before the outpouring rays, there to be bathed in sound and shimmer, then departing with straightened limbs and opened eyes while the crowd exulted and exalted in the—
“Come on, let’s get out of here!”
Someone was shaking Kay by the shoulders and she opened her eyes. Funny, she thought her eyes had been open all along—but now she blinked and saw Al Bedard standing over her, peering down anxiously.
He muttered something else, but she couldn’t make out the words; they were lost in the shrieks and moans of those about her. And over all rose the chanting and the greenish glow pouring from the crystal in the box.
Bedard gripped her arm and helped her rise. As she turned away from the clamoring crowd Kay caught a last glimpse of the faces bathed in the crystal’s light—the pale and swarthy and saffron faces, the bearded faces, the faces with pinpoint-pupiled eyes and opened mouths, which wailed and panted and pursued her with echoes of ecstasy as Bedard guided her out of the chamber and into the quiet darkness of the deserted street beyond.
She was still not entirely aware; there were moments when the blurred feeling returned. The sound of the motor starting dispelled it and she found herself seated beside Al Bedard as the car pulled out into the street in a U-turn and headed back north on Normandie.
All the while he was talking to Kay, telling her to snap out of it, get herself together. She tried to concentrate on what he was saying.
“Hypnotist, that’s what he is, a goddam hypnotist! I remember when I was a kid, my folks dragged me down to see Sister Aimee at her Temple. She used an organ and light cues, but it worked for her too—”
Mass hypnosis, that was the answer,
Kay told herself. Bedard kept on talking.
“—phoney hype with that crystal—he must have rigged up a battery-powered light behind it in the box—”
Very possible.
Kay nodded, welcoming the commonsense explanation.
“—all those faith-healers depend on the same thing—pitching a line to a bunch of hysterical freaks so that they come to Jesus and throw away their crutches. Of course he could have used stooges too, planted them in the audience. Whatever his gimmick is, I’ll bet he sure as hell winds up with a big collection tonight after the way he turned them on. Did you get a good look at those kids? Half of them stoned out of their skulls on smack. And that damned incense smelled like hash to me. He set them up for a real trip.”
Kay nodded again. It made sense, the kind of sense she desperately desired. Hard drugs could help explain the audience response, and it explained the make-up of the audience too. She strained to remember what she had seen and heard, as though groping amidst the fading memories of a dream. And the bits and pieces came in flashes, in facets like the facets of the crystal.
Staring eyes. Shrieking mouths. The white, black, brown, yellow, youthful faces.
But something still eluded her, something important, something she knew she must recall. It was back there in the dream, back there in the blur, back in the chanting and the chamber. A glimpse of what didn’t belong with the others—the youthful ones.
Then it came.
When she stood up and walked out; that’s when she’d seen the face. The face off in the shadows on the far side of the hall—the face that wasn’t young.
The face of the man who called himself Ben Powers.
After Bedard dropped her off at the apartment, Kay took one of the little red pills.
Ordinarily she avoided them; as a matter of fact she’d made a point of hiding the plastic container at the back of the top shelf in her medicine cabinet, so as to minimize temptation.
Red devils, get thee behind me.
But there were times when sleep refused its summons, and then it became necessary to seek slumber in capsule form. Every model Kay knew did the same; they were all Sleeping Beauties whose very existence depended upon awakening refreshed after a long rest. Without sleep the beauty faded and the telltale evidence of fatigue would be detected by the camera. The camera was today’s Prince Charming, awakening the modern Sleeping Beauty with a click instead of a kiss.
Last night she’d faced her insomniac problem without a chemical solution and without success. A repetition of that was out of the question. Out of all the questions—
who was this man who shadowed her and why, who was Reverend Nye and what did he want?
Kay took the pill and the questions vanished. Vanished in the darkness of her bedroom, in the deeper darkness of her descent into oblivion, nepenthe, the little death.
But in her sleep she was shadowed still—not by the man who called himself Powers but by a crazy Irishman named O’Blivion. He stood watching as the Reverend Nepenthe gave her the potion to drink, the potion that brought peace and forgetfulness. Only she did not forget—she remembered. Remembered the haunting chant that echoed through the deeper darkness.
“That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange eons, even death may die.”
She knew what it meant now. It meant that Albert wasn’t dead. He was merely asleep, as she was asleep, resting beneath the roiling waters until death died and he could rise again, a red devil rising from the deep blue sea when the Great Old Ones came forth from stony sepulchres and icy tombs to claim their own. Their eyes were watching her, millions of eyes opening to hurl their hunger in a stare; millions of mouths opening to appease that hunger; millions of tentacles groping to grasp her, draw her closer to the hungry eyes and gaping maws, and as the chanting rose she drowned it out with a scream.
And sat up, blinking in the morning sunlight.
Kay needed no mirror to tell her that she hadn’t rested. A glance at her alarm clock, which she’d forgotten to set, was sufficient to provide the other information she required.
Ten o’clock. She’d overslept, but that was good. It meant the agency was open and she could call Max, tell him to cancel the model session with Reverend Nye.
Kay thought about it as she bathed, dressed, fixed breakfast. Max was going to need a good excuse before he dumped the deal, but what could she tell him? Certainly the truth wouldn’t do—the truth was only a dream.